Author | Susanna Jones |
---|---|
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Publisher | Picador |
Publication date | 2001 |
Media type | |
Pages | 224 |
Awards | John Llewellyn Rhys Prize Betty Trask Award CWA New Blood Dagger |
ISBN | 0-330-48501-6 |
The Earthquake Bird is the 2001 debut novel by British author Susanna Jones. It won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, a Betty Trask Award, and the Crime Writers' Association John Creasy Dagger. [1] The novel was later adapted by Wash Westmoreland into a film called the Earthquake Bird , which was released by Netflix in November 2019. [2]
The story opens in a Tokyo police station where 34-year-old Lucy Fly is being questioned over the murder of her friend and fellow British expatriate Lily Bridges. Lucy has been in Tokyo for 10 years, is fluent in Japanese, and employed in translating manuals into English. She is evasive in her answers to the police but recounts to the readers what led to her current situation: her estrangement from her family in England, her relationship with Teiji, an enigmatic photographer, and the recent arrival of Lily.
Through flashbacks, we learn that Lucy grew up in East Yorkshire as the youngest child and only daughter of a family of eight children. Lucy was neglected by her parents and bullied by her older brothers. She nearly drowns in the sea without her family noticing, and during a later childhood incident, her older brothers hurl objects at her while she is reading on a tree. Lucy accidentally kills her eldest brother Noah by jumping on him from the tree, causing him to fall onto a nail. Lucy is further traumatised by the incident, which only serves to estrange her further from her family and from other people. She studies foreign languages including French and Japanese, deliberately distancing herself further from her provincial family. Following her university studies, Lucy moves to Japan to work as a translator.
While living in Japan, Lucy befriends Teiji, who works in a noodle shop by day and takes photographs at night, after a chance encounter in the street which leads to casual sex. Lucy quickly develops strong feelings for the enigmatic stranger. Separately, American expatriate Bob introduces Lucy to fellow British expatriate Lily, who also hails from East Yorkshire and is fleeing an abusive relationship back home. Lily is the only one of Lucy's friends to meet Teiji, whom she ordinarily tries to keep to herself. When Lily decides to return home to her abuser, Lucy manipulates her into staying in Japan with the promise of a trip to Sado Island; Teiji decides to accompany them unannounced and a love triangle develops. Lily disappears and is reported missing after a heated argument at Lucy's flat, which leads to Lucy's arrest and questioning which opens the novel after a dismembered body believed to be Lily's washes up in Tokyo Bay. Unknown to Lucy, the dismembered body proves to be misidentified, but shortly after Lily's actual body is found near Lucy's home; in a fit of contrition Lucy falsely confesses to the murder, but she is cleared when CCTV footage shows Lily alive several hours after the supposed time of death - and meeting Teiji, who has disappeared. Lucy is released, and as she recuperates at her friend's house, she believes she hears the clicking of his camera's shutter, and the novel ends unresolved.
Reviews were generally positive :
Bridget Jones's Diary is a 1996 novel by Helen Fielding. Written in the form of a personal diary, the novel chronicles a year in the life of Bridget Jones, a thirty-something single working woman living in London. She writes about her career, self-image, vices, family, friends, and romantic relationships.
Jun'ichirō Tanizaki was a Japanese author who is considered to be one of the most prominent figures in modern Japanese literature. The tone and subject matter of his work ranges from shocking depictions of sexuality and destructive erotic obsessions to subtle portrayals of the dynamics of family life within the context of the rapid changes in 20th-century Japanese society. Frequently, his stories are narrated in the context of a search for cultural identity in which constructions of the West and Japanese tradition are juxtaposed.
Susanna Moore is an American writer and teacher. Born in Pennsylvania but raised in Hawaii, Moore worked as a model and script reader in Los Angeles and New York City before beginning her career as a writer. Her first novel, My Old Sweetheart, published in 1982, earned a PEN Hemingway nomination, and won the Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She followed this with The Whiteness of Bones in 1989, and her third novel, Sleeping Beauties, in 1993. All three of these novels were set in Hawaii and charted dysfunctional family relationships.
Isabella Lucy Bird, married name Bishop, was a nineteenth-century British explorer, writer, photographer, and naturalist. With Fanny Jane Butler she founded the John Bishop Memorial Hospital in Srinagar in today’s Kashmir. She was the first woman to be elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Bridget Rose Jones is a fictional character created by British writer Helen Fielding. Jones first appeared in Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary column in The Independent in 1995, which did not carry any byline. Thus, it seemed to be an actual personal diary chronicling the life of Jones as a thirtysomething single woman in London as she tries to make sense of life, love, and relationships with the help of a surrogate "urban family" of friends in the 1990s. The column was, in fact, a lampoon of women's obsession with love, marriage and romance as well as women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan and wider social trends in Britain at the time. Fielding published the novelisation of the column in 1996, followed by a sequel in 1999 called The Edge of Reason.
Naomi is a novel by Japanese author Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (1886–1965). Writing of the novel began in 1924, and from March to June, Osaka's Morning News published the first several chapters of the serial. Four months later, the periodical Female started to publish the remaining chapters. The novel was first published in book form, by Kaizosha, in 1925.
Susan Penhaligon is a British actress and writer known for her role in the drama series Bouquet of Barbed Wire (1976), and for playing Helen Barker in the sitcom A Fine Romance (1981–1984).
Fumiko Enchi was the pen-name of Fumiko Ueda, one of the most prominent Japanese women writers in the Shōwa period of Japan. As a writer, Enchi is best known for her explorations into the ideas of sexuality, gender, human identity, and spirituality.
All About Lily Chou-Chou is a 2001 Japanese film, written and directed by Shunji Iwai, that portrays the lives of 14-year-old students in Japan and the effect the enigmatic singer Lily Chou-Chou's music has on some of them.
Natsuo Kirino is the pen name of Mariko Hashioka, a Japanese novelist and a leading figure in the recent boom of female writers of Japanese detective fiction.
The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, published in October 2006 by Bloomsbury, is a collection of eight short stories by British writer Susanna Clarke, illustrated by Charles Vess. The stories, which are sophisticated fairy tales, focus on the power of women and are set in the same alternative history as Clarke's debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004), in which magic has returned to England. The stories are written in a pastiche of 18th- and 19th-century styles and their tone is macabre as well as satirical. The volume was generally well received, though some critics compared it unfavorably to Jonathan Strange.
Paul Westmoreland, known professionally as Wash Westmoreland and previously known as Wash West, is a British director who has worked in television, documentaries, and independent films. He frequently collaborated with his husband, writer-director Richard Glatzer. Together, they wrote and directed the 2014 film Still Alice, based on Lisa Genova's NYT best-selling book and starred Julianne Moore, Kristen Stewart, and Alec Baldwin. The film won many awards, including the Academy Award for Best Actress for Julianne Moore and Humanitas Prize for feature film for the duo. Their 2006 coming-of-age feature film, Quinceañera, won the Audience Award and the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.
Charlotte Temple is a novel by British-American author Susanna Rowson, originally published in England in 1791 under the title Charlotte, A Tale of Truth. It tells the story of a schoolgirl, Charlotte Temple, who is seduced by a British officer and brought to America, where she is abandoned, pregnant, sick and in poverty. The first American edition was published in 1794 and the novel became a bestseller. It has gone through over 200 American editions. Late in life, the author wrote a sequel that was published posthumously.
A Riot of Goldfish is a short story written by Japanese author Okamoto Kanoko in 1937.
Susanna Jones is a British writer. Her debut novel, The Earthquake Bird won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize a Betty Trask Award and the Crime Writers' Association John Creasy Dagger.
A Tale for the Time Being is a metafictional novel by Ruth Ozeki narrated by two characters, a sixteen-year-old Japanese American girl living in Tokyo who keeps a diary, and a Japanese American writer living on an island off the coast of British Columbia who finds the diary of the young woman washed ashore some time after the 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan.
The Sex Lives of Siamese Twins is the ninth novel by Scottish writer Irvine Welsh, published in May 2014.
Earthquake Bird is a 2019 psychological thriller film written and directed by Wash Westmoreland based on the 2001 novel of the same name by Susanna Jones. It stars Alicia Vikander, Riley Keough, Naoki Kobayashi and Jack Huston.
Watashi, Teiji de Kaerimasu, subtitled No Working After Hours!, is a 2018 novel by Japanese writer Kaeruko Akeno. The story follows the life of a woman who refuses to follow the working habits of her coworkers and bosses. The book and its sequel were adapted by Satoko Okudera into a 2019 TBS television drama starring Yuriko Yoshitaka that drew international attention for its criticisms of Japanese corporate life.
In the Cut is a 1995 thriller novel by American writer Susanna Moore. The plot follows an English teacher at New York University who becomes entangled in a sexual relationship with a detective investigating a series of gruesome murders in her neighborhood. The novel was adapted into a feature film of the same name in 2003 by director Jane Campion.